It's been 40 years since the last Moon Mission
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02-13-2013, 10:20 PM
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Canuck Nation
Simple reason humans haven't been back to the moon?
Because sending humans to the moon and getting them back alive was the goal in and of itself, and that was reached. It was done so the US could say "First!" instead of the Soviets, and they did.
Like it or not, we're still relying on rocket propulsion to get things into orbit. I'm well aware there are several theoretical forms of space propulsion that are showing promise, but for the meantime, we're stuck with rocket fuel. Just getting things out of the atmosphere is phenomenally expensive and often quite dangerous.
A big problem with the moon is there's not a lot there that humans find convenient, such as air, water or food. Just getting them there and back is difficult enough, but establishing any kind of permanent settlement requires constant resupply missions, each one facing the same potential dangers as the initial mission. Example: the idea of putting a mine there. Establishing a mine requires a VERY large capital investment before anything even gets mined, and that's just building a mine on this planet. Putting one on the moon could very easily bankrupt several nations. Also, even assuming you manage to somehow assemble the trillions of dollars needed to put a mine on the moon and keep it running and supplied long enough for it to mine anything, the problem is how to get the mined ore. It's not going to be trucked off to the refinery, is it? There aren't any of those in orbit that I'm aware of, so that means getting several tons of ore back down the gravity well without creating a new geologic feature resembling the Gulf of Mexico.
A landing dock on the moon? For what? We actually don't have a lot of spaceships lying around. It'd be like a society that just invented the wheel deciding to build a gas station. We just haven't reached the technological level where it's safe or cheap enough to be worth going to the moon on a regular basis, especially as it can't support human life. If we manage to reach that stage without wiping ourselves out first, my guess is none of us will be around to see it. Just my thoughts, anyway.
Last edited by ProstheticConscience: 02-14-2013 at
. Reason: typos, grammar.
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